A good day to be stuck in Newcastle....

This morning I set off with a large dose of London pride, still feeling that the afterglow of winning the Olympic bid would sustain a revolution that London badly needs. As a city, London suffers from an infrastructure that is out of date and not worthy of a major international metropolis. Today, though, I'm stuck in Newcastle having had an 'interesting' meeting that started at 11 and finished around 4 during which the results of today's atrocity filtered through as people starting texting me to ask where I was. With an office in Old St... an area that is triangulated by three of the attack sites (Moorgate, Kings Cross and Liverpool St) it's not surprising that I feel shocked, devastated, and just exhausted with emotion. Over the last three day's we've had Live8, the Olympic Bid and now these terrorist attacks. It's as if each party in turn is desperate to sieze the agenda. Who's next. We've gone from peaceful semi-altruistic pop-concerts, to the 'noble' spirit of the Olympics and a democratic process and now back to the reptilian part of the brain that grabs our attention by the throat.

Somehow we stumbled through our meeting.....

Independence Day

Note the date, 4th July, it's finally official. Corporate brand licensing has arrived in the UK. One recent 'brand-damager' at one of the big FMCG manufacturers I spoke to has already appointed a licensing agency to do merchandising! That hasn't happened once in the past 3 years.

Time to tap into the phenomenon known as 'market growth'!